Chapter 23
THOMAS
The hall was warmer than the yard and smelled of smoke, bread, onions, and the morning’s interrupted meal, all of it wrapped in that damp October fug that settled into wool, rushes, hair, bone, and probably the souls of men who had already had enough of the day.
Alyson sat near Edith, peeling an apple with such grave concentration that the tip of her tongue poked out between her teeth.
Her brother stood by the table with a trencher in one hand and suspicion in both eyes, looking between Thomas and Amelia as if trying to work out why the air had gone strange.
Walter moved toward the accounts with the stiff determination of a man who had decided the end of the world could be postponed if only the columns were checked in proper order.
Amelia was already seated at the far end of the table.
She had chosen the narrow spill of light beneath the shuttered window, where the grey morning slid over the rolls and made her hands look pale against the dark wood.
Her quill was in her fingers. Her face was calm.
Too calm. She dipped the quill, made a mark, and did not look up when Thomas entered.
It should have pleased him. Had he not spent the last two days telling himself distance was wise?
Had he not warned her, like a fool and a coward, that he was the worst danger to her?
Had he not stood in the yard five minutes ago and refused a bargain that might have saved Ashcombe because sending her away had become unthinkable?
Her coldness should have helped. It did not. It made the hall feel larger and emptier around him.
Walter cleared his throat. “My lord, the mason waits with a report on the southeast corner.”
The day, having delivered Belmaine before breakfast, had apparently decided to be generous with misery.
Thomas looked at Amelia. She turned a page. The quill moved.
“My lord?” Walter said.
Thomas dragged his gaze away. “Send him in.”
The afternoon had no improvement to offer.
The mason’s report was expensive, necessary, and delivered with the cheerful sorrow of a man who knew exactly how much bad news cost. The southeast corner needed new stone, not merely timber bracing, unless Thomas wanted the next winter storm to put part of the wall into the ditch.
A tenant arrived with a grievance about sheep that took an hour to resolve and resolved nothing except Thomas’s desire never to see a sheep again.
Young Col had cracked a practice sword in the lists, which was both impressive and ill-timed.
Friar Huck came by with honey and left with an argument about whether mead counted as a household necessity.
“It is a medicinal substance,” Huck declared, his round face shining with conviction beneath his travel-stained hood.
“It is a drink,” Edith said from the kitchen passage, where she was turning a spit with one hand and ruling the known world with the other.
“So is water,” Huck said.
“And look how little men value that.”
Huck considered this as if it were a point in formal disputation. “Then I shall say mead is holy.”
“You say that because bees made it.”
“Bees are industrious creatures of God.”
“So are laundresses,” Edith said. “Yet no one has called my wash water holy.”
Hob, who had been foolish enough to be drinking small beer at that moment, choked into his cup.
Alyson brightened. “Is wash water holy if Mistress Amelia says we must use it?”
“No,” Edith said.
“Then why must Wat wash his hands before supper?”
“Because Wat has hands that could sour milk.”
Wat objected loudly as his sister laughed. Huck blessed the honey, the argument, and quite possibly the insult. Life in the hall continued around Thomas with all its ordinary noise and warmth, and through all of it Amelia remained near and unreachable.
In the hall, she sat with the accounts. When Thomas crossed toward the fire, she rose to fetch Edith.
When he went to the accounts chamber, she was in the stillroom.
When he stomped out to the yard, she was by the buttery door speaking with Walter about lamp oil, her head covered properly, her hands folded properly, her voice politely proper enough to make his teeth ache.
Never obviously fleeing. Amelia was too clever for that. Always working, useful, exactly where she couldn’t be accused of avoiding him, and precisely far enough away that no one could say she sought his company.
Thomas had spent enough of his life on battlefields reading the ground to know a strategic withdrawal when he watched one.
He didn’t know what had put her to flight. No. That was a bloody lie.
He knew several things that might have done it. His own words at the gate after market. Belmaine’s attention. Walter’s pale, careful silence. Perhaps all of them had worked together, little knives cutting one thread at a time.
In the late afternoon, with the light going grey, Thomas found himself alone in the small accounts chamber. He hadn’t meant to be there.
The chamber was narrow and cold, with a little window set deep in the wall and a table that had grown familiar beneath Amelia’s hands.
Her work lay before him in neat rows. Rolls tied with linen.
A wax tablet covered in her quick marks.
A tally of salt, lamp oil, nails, peas, winter cloth, and a dozen other small necessities by which Ashcombe survived the cold months.
The room smelled of parchment, wax, old dust, and faintly of lavender. Amelia had been here earlier. He knew it, though he could not have said how. Some trace of her lingered in the space, a brightness even her absence couldn’t quite put out.
He picked up the market tally.
Salt: two sacks paid. One pledged at Martinmas price, to be collected after All Saints if coin permits.
Lamp oil: less dear from widow with sharp eyes. Return if quality holds.
Iron nails: good. Apprentice gawks. Avoid.
Peas: insufficient. Thomas disagrees. Thomas is wrong.
He stared at that last line.
Despite everything, a laugh almost rose but failed halfway. Thomas set the tally down.
Belmaine would not leave the matter. A man like that did not go empty-handed.
He had wanted Ashcombe bound by marriage, softened by gratitude, opened by alliance.
Thomas had refused. Now Belmaine would seek another way, and the obvious weapon stood beneath Thomas’s roof, with no kin, no past anyone could verify, and a cover story that had seemed useful only because desperation made men mistake cracked shields for strong ones.
The woman who had appeared from nowhere. The runaway wife. The faery. The leman.
The word sat cold in Thomas’s mind.
He hated it.
He hated that the world could take Amelia’s cleverness, kindness, questions, and clean hands, then twist them into something ugly enough to burn. He hated that Belmaine knew it. He hated that Walter knew it. He hated that Amelia likely knew it too and had begun making herself smaller because of it.
She had worn grey today. The color did not suit her.
It had made her look quieter than she was, as if she had chosen the cloth because it wouldn’t draw the eye.
Her hair had been covered brutally, not a single curl escaping.
Amelia without one curl out of place felt like a room after all the candles had been snuffed.
The window for keeping Ashcombe safe and Amelia under his roof was narrowing, and he had no plan for it. None. The one person he would have asked to help him think was sitting at the far end of the hall not looking at him, and nothing would make him send her away.
Not for Belmaine.
Not for the crown’s suspicion.
Not for Fernhill’s grazing or ten marks or a quiet girl of twenty who made no difficulties.
Not for anything.
He had sent people away before, for their own good, and called it mercy. He had decided what was best for them and never once asked, because asking gave people room to refuse, and he had never had much patience for refusal when danger rode hard. It had kept men alive. Mayhap.
It had also left him standing alone in a great many cold rooms. He would not do it to Amelia even though it was wise. Perhaps because it was wise.
The door creaked behind him as Thomas turned.
Amelia stood in the doorway with a small bundle of tied parchment in her hands.
Her grey gown was plain, the sleeves rolled back from her wrists, and her wimple remained perfect.
Too perfect. Her freckles stood out against her skin, paler than usual, and there was no ink on her jaw today.
No curl at her cheek. No little sign of disorder.
He missed the disorder with a ferocity that shamed him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Walter said the tallies from the lower field were in here.”
Her voice was courteous.
Thomas leaned back against the table. “They are.”
She looked past him, found the roll she needed, and took one step into the room.
Not two. One. He hated that he noticed.
“Belmaine offered marriage,” she said.
Not a question.
Thomas’s hand tightened on the table edge. “Aye.”
“And land.”
“Aye.”
“And protection from the crown.”
“He claimed as much.”
She nodded, as if checking figures against a column. “It was a good offer.”
“No.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “Don’t lie to me.”
The words cut clean through the politeness. For one breath, there she was again, her green eyes snapping with fire.
Thomas looked at her, and some of the cold in him eased even as the danger sharpened.
“It was a good bargain,” he said. “That is not the same thing.”
Pain flickered in her face. She hid it quickly, but not quickly enough.
“You should consider it.”
“I did.”
“For more than ten seconds.”
“I needed fewer.”
“Thomas.”
His name. At last. It struck him low and hard.
She seemed to realize she had said it, because her mouth closed and her gaze dropped to the parchment in her hands.
He took one step toward her. She took one back. The movement stopped him more effectively than a blade drawn.
Thomas kept his voice low. “Is this why you have pulled away?”